The Supermassive Podcast - 13: New Year, New Universe

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

Izzie Clarke and Dr Becky Smethurst are kicking off the new year with the beginning of everything, the Big Bang. They speak with Professor David Wands who explains how our universe began, and dive into the historical debate behind this model with Professor Thomas Hertog. And, as always, astronomer Dr Robert Massey shares his top tips for stargazing this month.  Send the team your questions, photos and science book recommendations on social media using #RASSupermassive or email [e-mail] The Supermassive Podcast is a Boffin Media Production by Izzie Clarke and Richard Hollingham.

Get a flask. Oh my god, I've just knocked a water bottle over. Should leave that in. If our universe is expanding, does this mean that there is a centre? Further out into our universe we look, we're looking further back in time, in effect. It raises more questions, like, well, if the universe began, can it end? Hello, welcome to the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, science journalist Izzy Clark and astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst. And we're kicking off the new year with the beginning of everything, the Big Bang. That's right and come

December we'll explore how the universe might end if it hasn't already happened by then. Not only is it a new year, but also the Supermassive podcast is a year old. Happy birthday to us. Happy birthday. Our baby's gotten so big. You brought birthday cake, right? I didn't, but I'm definitely using that as an excuse later to eat it's so weird though to think that like a year ago we recorded our first episode in that beautiful room in the ras like you know that the council room with all the books everywhere i wanted

to be like bell from you beauty and the beast just sort of swinging around didn't i but like that that was one of the only of the two two episodes did in person, and we've been doing them from home since. I know, it's been a weird year, but here we are with episode 13. And as always, we're joined by Robert Massey, the Deputy Director of the Royal Astronomical Society. So is the Big Bang a misleading name for the beginning of our universe? Well, it is really, because it wasn't a bang as such, and a big bang implies this

expansion into something. It's more of a sort of headlong rush, where the kind of size, the very size of space in the universe expanded outwards rapidly, and continues to do so to this day. And we can't even really adequately explain the very start because the physics isn't up to it yet. It's also worth noting that Fred Hoyle, who really hated the theory, he called it the Big Bang as a derogatory term, and then it got adopted. He had this idea that there was what was called a steady state and matter was being created to fill the gaps as the universe expanded, which of course, you know, may sound completely ridiculous. But then in the context of the time, you know, you only had to create a few atoms a year. So we should be a bit forgiving, I guess, about the people who were skeptical at the start. yeah big bang I think we're stuck with it I mean what are we

going to call it you know the sort of uh the gentle expansion or the you know you know or the uh the everywhere stretch well it's funny that you say that because Enigma Dave on Twitter says one of the few things we can say with certainty is that there was no bang so i guess this is a question for everyone we've had headlong rush as one if you could rename the start of all of this what would you choose to call it i've heard people call it the cosmic egg which i kind of like because like an egg hatches and then this thing comes out and then you've already got all of the stuff you need to make like a bird or a chicken right like and it kind of is analogous to the big bang so cosmic egg i think it needs to be a cosmic egg at sort of a time i think we should go for something just even more confusing like super hipster alternative like

the event and then no one just really explains what it is and you just like accept that it's a thing and move on you know what we would really do if we were proper astrophysicists is we'd come up with a name for it and like the event and then we'd fit the most obscure acronym we possibly could to those letters. Yeah, that's what our listeners can do. You can message in and find something that will squeeze into that.

Cheers, Robert. Anyway, we'll be catching up with you later in the show for some more stargazing. So to quote the theme tune from the big bang theory at the beginning our whole universe was in a hot dead state it's uh it's actually impossible to not do that but the words are our whole universe was in a hot dense state the big bang model describes how all this started from when the universe was incredibly small. It's not just matter and energy we're talking about here, it's literally space and

time being created in the Big Bang and expanding to give us our ever-growing universe. Yeah, I mean, it's really hard to picture it not as a sort of single point in space that expanded outwards like you would like a typical explosion but the big bang just it wasn't explosion at all you know if we go back the 13.8 billion years back to the very beginning everything that is currently in the universe now was still there it was just a lot smaller it was incredibly incredibly dense that it was compacted down to you know it's just been stretched outward since then it's like a like a bobble or an elastic band something like that right where you can stretch it and stretch it and stretch it but you don't create any new elastic band in the process right you still have what you

started with and and the big bang is something like that but still as people picture it in their heads they picture this point you know somewhere but that's the thing because space was created in the big bang and because time was created in the big bang there was no before the big bang and there's no place where something could be because space hadn't been created yet so yeah it's a lot to wrap your head around yeah well to help unravel this mystery a little bit more i spoke with with Professor David Wands from the University of Portsmouth and started by asking him if we know what kicked things off 13.8 billion years ago. What caused our universe to begin, really how the universe begins, that instant, that is the limit of our knowledge. So I can't tell you how the universe began right at that instant what we can tell you know what we can describe is how the universe from this ultra hot state expanded and

cooled we know a lot about fundamental physical processes up to high energies that we can test on earth and that really can take us through from the first fraction of a second after the hot Big Bang through the next 14 billion years, we then think we understand most of the physical processes, the key physical processes at work. Right, so the very beginning, what kicked it all off is still a bit of a question mark. But from a fraction of a second afterwards, we know what was going on. So what was it like? What was going on? Well, in the first fraction of a second after we know what was going on so what was it like what was going on when in the first fraction of a second after the big bang we have a real dense soup of elementary particles but we can't see directly into that very early time because all these particles are scattering

off one another so so light doesn't escape from from hot, dense plasma. The temperature is something like 10 billion degrees. And at that time, what you're seeing is nuclear physics at work. You have a plasma of hot, charged particles. And so we see processes of nuclear fusion going on in the Earth universe. Three minutes after the Big Bang, that's the period at which protons and neutrons can combine to form some of the light atomic nuclei. So, nuclei such as helium or deuterium. So, just after three minutes, it's so hot that we're seeing this nuclear fusion. And these are the processes that go on within our own sun. So, this is the beginning of us getting

elements, essentially. Yes, that's right. It's the formation of us getting elements, essentially. Yes, that's right. It's the formation of the first elements. It's only the lightest elements that can form in this way. And indeed, we know that heavy elements, more complicated elements, so carbon, oxygen, even ultimately iron and gold and the heavy metals form much later in stars. OK, so that takes us up to three minutes. What happens after that point? Well, the universe continues to expand and cool and perhaps the next major landmark moment

is when those charged atomic nuclei, protons which become hydrogen or the helium nuclei, combine with electrons. And that's now at the energy levels of atomic physics. The temperatures dropped to just 3000 Kelvin or so. And that would be after about 370,000 years. So we've got a very clear timeline of when these processes happen. So we've gone from three minutes to 370,000 years. Quite, quite a wait. That's right. So the universe cools in this very orderly fashion.

But after 370,000 years, the electrons and protons combine to form neutral atoms. Because they're neutral, they don't interact strongly with the photons, with the light. And so the universe becomes transparent. And instead, we see the light from that recombination of the electrons and protons. But further out into our universe we look, we're looking further back in time, in effect, and we see that the universe is different. At great distances from us, we discover galaxies appear younger,

and eventually we can actually see light from this hot, thermal Big Bang. We actually see today relic radiation from that time and that's what we call the cosmic microwave background radiation i think a big question that always springs to mind is how can something and by something i mean our universe begin from nothing like how can something just start well i think like most physicists i think there must be more than the simple big bang model that i've spoken about so far because it's singular it really is incomplete so there's a lot of research going on currently to understand how we could describe that emergence of the universe within our physical theories but we

know we have to go beyond the current standard model of particle physics. There has to be something more than we currently have in the standard model of particle physics. Professor David Wands from the University of Portsmouth. Now, Becky, how exactly do we know that this is how our universe began? Yeah, I mean, it's literally a little bit of cosmic archaeology, if you will. You're sort of looking at all of the clues and evidence and bits of fossil almost that our universe gives us that's left over from this time. So the fact that light takes time to travel to us,

it has this speed limit of 30 million metres per second, right? It means that we can see almost back in time as we look further back through the universe and we can see how things have evolved and come to grow to you know to the galaxies we see now we also see this cosmic microwave background um this echo in in microwave or radio waves that we see from every single point in space that comes from this this heat left over from the big bang that's now cooled and essentially with all those observations you then come up with this this model this theory that if you extrapolate back from what we see now what did we have in the beginning and and from that beginning can it explain everything we see

now and so that's how we end up with this this model of the big bang and if our universe is expanding does this mean that there is a center no and again this this comes back this idea of trying to picture the big bang as starting from somewhere in space but exactly yeah the big bang was everywhere because space was created so the big bangs you know right next to your ear right now it could be where the big bang happened and the universe obviously is expanding and growing from there as well i guess the question is is really whether the universe is infinite or not right because if it is infinite then it doesn't really have a center but if it isn't and it has some size and some shape or geometry then technically you you could have a geometric center right but that would be meaningless it wouldn't be that you know something had happened there or it'd be

anywhere special there is however the center of the observable universe and the center of the observable universe is you right not you necessarily don't get too big-headed or anything i think you'll find that it is it's you observing the universe like whoever you are right um because this idea that light takes time to travel to us there is actually the furthest that we could possibly see and that is you know however old the universe is uh back sort of the furthest thing we can see and so that means that as soon as you observe the universe you know when you look out in any single direction you can only see that far so you are at the very center of this sort of spherical observable

universe that you can see so I quite like that idea yeah absolutely and I guess that comes to you know your point of reference and doing universe like that yeah exactly and so why is the idea of our universe starting in this infinitely dense state so important? I mean, where does all of this stuff come from? It's funny that saying where does it come from? It was already there. You know, to have an infinitely dense state, you have to have a huge amount of material, right? Everything that's in the universe now was in that point, just infinitely small.

And this is what we call this singularity you know and people might have heard of this term in reference to black holes right this infinitely dense point and that's really how we describe it mathematically right and it's what actually roger penrose won his nobel prize for just back in 2020 you know with his work and with his work where with stephen hawking showing that these singularities aren't just these mathematical curiosities that make mathematicians happy about dividing by zero. They're, you know, actual sort of inevitabilities in nature as well.

And it's really important because it shows that, you know, our universe isn't endless or eternal that some thought or might have hoped in the early 20th century, as we'll hear in a minute. And it also, it just, it raises more questions like, well, if the universe began, can it end? And if it will end, then how will it end? And perhaps could then, you know, the big bang happen again? Is it perhaps cyclical that we go through, you know, big bangs and the opposite, like a big crunch or something, you know, over and over again, you know, endlessly, perhaps, you know over and over again you know endlessly perhaps you know perhaps it is endless in the end

and this is why i say that you know there's so much that we don't know than we do know yes okay we've got this fantastic model of the big bang that explains these observations of the universe we make but it almost raises more questions than it answers now it can take a while to wrap your head around how our universe began and that it's expanding. Trust me, I've spent a fair number of years trying to do just that. But imagine being the person to first figure this out and then having to convince other people of your way of thinking. The Big Bang was a theory that reshaped how we saw and understood our universe. And throughout the 20th century, it was the source of much debate among scientists. To tell us more about this is Professor Thomas Hertog from the University of Leuven in Belgium.

All right, Thomas, let's start us off now. Who first came up with the idea of the Big Bang? Who first hypothesized it? And when was this? This was sort of a two-step process. The very first suggestion came from a Russian astronomer, Alexander Friedman, in 1923 or 1924. But he thought about that purely as a mathematical exercise. He didn't really think that our universe had a Big Bang. And incidentally, he was working with Einstein's new theory of gravity, and Einstein himself completely dismissed Friedman's suggestion. But then the idea resurfaced a couple of years later in 1927,

and that was by a Belgian astronomer, Giorgio Lemaitre. So he was a priest and an astronomer, and he was also working with Einstein's theory. And he went further than Friedman. He really suggested physically that our actual universe was expanding and therefore had an origin in what he called a primeval atom. And that was the first suggestion, 1927, 1928. And so what did he do with that information?

You have that idea, then what did George LeMaitre do with that? Right, right. So he wrote a paper, as we do, and he published that paper in a French journal. Now, in the fall of 1927, Einstein was in Belgium and Le Maître tried to meet up with him. And in fact, he got himself into a taxi with Einstein. And then he asked about it, like, look, I have this new theory about the universe and it's based on your new relativity theory of gravity. And I think the universe expands.

So Lemaître really predicted the expansion. Now, Einstein, of course, he remembered this business from Friedman a couple of years earlier. And he said, well, that's that's nonsense i know the theory admits this possibility but physically he said to the major this is abominable let's not think about it so so then what happens you know well you know you don't really want to say sorry i signed i'm continuing with my theory yeah so that's what did he do that's what basically that's what he did. So it's a very curious situation. In 1928 and 29, you basically had one person on the entire planet who was thinking he was living in an expanding universe, and that was Lemaître.

And so there are graphs which are preserved in the archives of Lemaître which show him solving Einstein's theory and getting all sorts of expanding universes. Now Lemaitre also sent his paper to Eddington in the UK, right? But for some reason Eddington didn't pick up on it. So I think it's important to point out that it's not just because it was in a French journal that this thing did not come true.

Because French was, together with German and English, a fairly common language to publish scientific results in those days. I think the real reason, and this shines true from the conversation between Einstein and Lemaitre, the real reason is that the scientific community wasn't ready for this bold new idea. Because, as you were saying earlier, if you come to think about it, it's really strange, right? It's really strange that the Earth is 4 billion years old.

And essentially what Lemaitre was saying was that a little bit before that, there was no universe. It's really, really strange. But that's what he was saying. And was anyone else in the field working on a similar idea or was he quite alone in this idea

of an expanding universe? That's a very good question. He was alone in this idea. But in 192929 there was an observer Edwin Hubble who was working with what was then the biggest telescope in the world in California near Los Angeles and Hubble was observing that the distant galaxies so the other galaxies other than the Milky Way that those distant galaxies, so the other galaxies other than the Milky Way, that those distant galaxies were moving away from us.

And the further he was looking, the faster they were moving away from us. Now, Hubble was not interpreting this observation as an indication for an expanding universe. He was just looking at it and saying, ah, this is like the Doppler effect, like when an ambulance moves away from us, the sound goes down.

Similarly, the light of these distant galaxies shifted to the red because they're moving away from us. But of course, Hubble's observations caught the attention of people like Eddington. And there was a very famous meeting on January the 10th of 1930 at the Royal Astronomical Society at which Eddington explicitly put on the table the question like, look guys, there is a problem here.

All these galaxies are moving away from us. If Einstein's theory is correct and applies to the universe as a whole, it better explains this. Now, Le Maître was not at that meeting, but in those days, the report of those meetings was published. And so the next month, he receives his copy of the observatory in Leuven and he said, what? Errington is asking this question. I solved this question. And so at that point, Le Maître wrote a letter to Errington and sent again his paper telling him,

one, I sent this to you before. And two, yeah, I also spoke about it with Einstein, but he didn't agree, and three, please read it again. It solves your question. And so at that point, yeah, this was the game changer. Eddington was extremely enthusiastic about it. He invited Lemaître to publish a translation of Lemaître's paper in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. a translation of Le Maître's paper in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. And the point is that in the 1927 paper, Le Maître already predicts that if we are living in an expanding universe, which Einstein's theory suggests, then we should see that the distant galaxies move away from us. That's the indication. So the whole circle closed 1930, 31.

And this nice little neat thing that he actually predicted before Hubble even observed it. But it's funny, isn't it, how we think of something that's a bit like the Big Bang as just so scientifically and universally accepted, but there was so much debate for so long, wasn't there? What was the turning point at which the Big Bang became the accepted theory? Yeah, you're right. This took decades and decades. Fred Hoyle, the famous British astronomer, for instance, was very much against Big Bang cosmology.

He invented the name Big Bang to make fun of Le Maître's theory. And he also did not miss any occasion to point out that Le Maître was a priest and that he had a religious agenda. And so, strangely enough, even in the 50s, Big Bang cosmology was out of fashion. It was not the dominant model. Hoyle had another solution. Hoyle said, look, it's okay, the galaxies, you're right, the galaxies are moving away from us. you're right, the galaxies are moving away from us, but in the voids, in the empty space that they leave behind,

constantly new galaxies emerge and are being born. And so overall, he said, the universe is just static and eternal and in a steady state. But then the real game changer came in 1964 when radio engineers at Bell Labs in the United States observed a faint echo of heat radiation. And this was precisely the unique prediction of Big Bang cosmology. If the universe was small and hot at very early times, it must have radiated. It must be filled with heat.

That heat has cooled now, but it hasn't disappeared. And so that was really the shot heard around the world. That was when it all changed. Okay, and so that's the cosmic microwave background which was discovered in 1964. So was Le Maître still alive to see this happen and unravel before everyone? Oh, that is an amazing story. Le Maître fell ill in 1962. And so he was by then out of touch with the scientific community.

But his successor really went to bring him the news on his deathbed. And so Le Maître heard three days before he died about the discovery of the cosmic microwave background, which proved his theory right. And so that's what he said. So I'm happy now we finally know. Wow, that's a luxury that hasn't been afforded to many scientists, is it? No, that's right.

So I never heard that. I'm so glad to have heard that today. Thank you so much, Thomas, for talking us through that. That was great. You're very welcome. This is the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, astrophysicist Dr. Becky Featherst and with science journalist Izzy Clark. We're starting the year with a look at how the universe began. But before we get to your questions, I ended up down a little rabbit

hole recently. And I thought you'd might like to know, Becky, that we are big in India. In India. Hello, India. We're the number one astronomy podcast in India. I'm obviously going to try and not let that go to my head. That's amazing, though. Like, I just, you know, you just want to say thanks for all the support, right? I think it's still crazy that we're recording this from our you know spare rooms when we're all housebound in lockdown and yet we're somehow reaching people like across the world that that's amazing and not only that we in the top 10 astronomy podcasts in France, Russia, New Zealand, Australia, Finland and Singapore well New Zealand is what I got from that and I'm like well that means Jacinda Ardern,

number one fan of science communicators in general, is definitely listening. Can you BFF, add her to the list? But I think we're basically ready for our world tour now. I mean, COVID's obviously delayed that, but we'll work on it as soon as we're out of lockdown. But honestly, though, we started this podcast last year to celebrate the royal astronomical

society's 200 year anniversary and across the year we have had more listeners than we ever imagined so thank you so much and you know in true podcast style if you are enjoying it then please rate and review the podcast because who knows then we can be big in canada i do love canada yeah next one of the world tour um but we've we've had some brilliant questions sent in this month for both you and Robert so let's get to it Becky Glyn Davis asks assuming that immediately after the big bang nothing could have had mass how long after the big bang was it that something developed mass um good question glenn um i feel like that's a question better directed to a particle physicist and not an astrophysicist

um like me but you know if brian cox can do it then i'll give it a go because he's technically a particle physicist that talks about astrophysics all the time so i think what glenn's talking about is that a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, or after expansion starts, if you will, nothing had mass before that, okay? And it's all due to the Higgs boson, or the Higgs field, all of a sudden kicking in, essentially. So before that, nothing had any mass until they were moving at the speed of light. But after that, the universe had cooled enough that the Higgs boson essentially takes charge, right? And then gives particle mass. And after that, the universe had cooled enough that the Higgs boson essentially takes charge, right? And then gives particle mass. And I've had the Higgs boson described to me as like

trying to walk through sort of two foot of snow, right? And that resistance of you trying to walk through that is what gives particles mass as they move through what's called this Higgs field, right? And it sort of slows them down and so they don't travel at the speed of light anymore so to answer your question glenn it was a trillionth of a second after the big bang is when the higgs boson was like right guys let's chill out now we're all gonna start having maths i love these questions we're really getting into it this month so robert peter from south australia asks was it a big bang or just the other side of a black hole ejecting we're really getting into it this month. So Robert, Peter from South Australia asks, was it a big bang or just the other side

of a black hole ejecting or that it devoured? You know, just that. Yeah, I love these straightforward questions that are in no way complicated to answer. I particularly like this quote. I was trying to look up this one and I found a quote from a Nature article in 2013, which says, and I quote,

for all physicists know, dragons could have come flying out of the singularity. And I summarized some of the speculation about this stuff. However, I will try to answer it more sensibly. It is a serious idea that instead of just the kind of Big Bang model we think about, there is this idea that you can have a bit of black hole forming in another universe, like a universe and then a daughter universe i.e one like our own forming inside that and that in this very strange way you're basically disconnected from it in any meaningful sense you can't travel between the two at least in no conceptual way we can think of but you can imagine a whole network a multiverse

multiple universes all connected in that way so as crazy as that sounds actually there is something that there are people looking at it as an idea i don't feel remotely qualified to comment on the merits of the idea i have to say but it but it is you know it's a real thing there are people who think about that idea that you know maybe mother universes everywhere spawn daughter universes inside black holes my brain just instantly took me to inception i just i just love the idea of the dragons flying out how can we be dragons no but this is legit though right this is actually i mean i say legit like again probably not qualified enough to comment as a like not a cosmologist on how you know seriously this is

taken but it has a name so i feel like that means it's taken seriously it's called like black hole cosmology and when uh peter was asking about the other side of a black hole you know that's a bit more sort of wormhole and sci-fi i think what he possibly means is the opposite of a black hole which is a white hole and that's another idea that's been raised as well is that actually um the universe could have been a white hole that you know spawned everything and when i say white hole right so if we think about a black hole and we think about all paths eventually in the future will lead you to that singularity at the center of the black hole so another way of saying that is literally the singularity is in the future a white hole

is the sort of time opposite of a black hole so instead of the singularity being in the future and you're always going to end up there the singularity is in the past and everything's coming out of it and so for the idea of the universe and the big bang to have actually been a white hole there's obviously a couple of things that you would then see in the universe one of the things you wouldn't see is that the universe would be homogeneous and isotropic as we say so it looks the same in every single direction that wouldn't be something you would see if the universe started in a white hole but because we do see it when people are like oh well that obviously can't be the case but the thing is we talked about this idea of the observable universe we can't actually see anything beyond

where we're not getting light from it so it could be that outside the observable universe stuff isn't looking all the same in every single direction and so then if you just you know just ignore homogeneity and isotropicness then actually the model of a white hole works and you can sort of picture it as you know when a star sort of collapses down it's like the opposite of that sort of watching that in reverse and mathematically modeling that there's absolutely no problem with it and it and it gives you the same thing that our current sort of best model of the universe with sort of general relativity and the big bang gives us um and we get back to that interesting point again about like you here be dragons you know because you can just you can think about all the crazy ideas that you could come up with you

know in the future and what people might come up with and anything could could come out of it but it the end of the day it's finding the best model that fits our observations and the big bang currently is that including the cosmic microwave background you know galaxies moving away from us the structure of the universe the fact that it looks the same in all directions as well so we're sticking with that for now but you never know we might get to the erb dragons theory one day yeah i'm literally crossing my fingers for the dragon discovery but becky you have done quite a few videos on this so where can people find them if they want to hear or watch more yeah um so on my youtube channel if you just search for dr becky on youtube or on google it

should come up there's more on sort of this great debate between big bang and steady state that we've talked about more on sort of the nature of the universe is there a center that kind of stuff done lots of videos on the Big Bang. So check those out. Perfect. And if you want to send in any questions to us for a future episode, then you can email podcast at ras.ac.uk

or tweet at Royal Astro Sock and we'll take a look. We actually look at every single one. So thank you. We do. Now, Robert, as always, what can we see in the night sky this month? Well, winter stars. This is winter. Obviously, you see the do. Now, Robert, as always, what can we see in the night sky this month? Well, winter stars.

This is winter. Obviously, you see the stars of winter. But also, look, there's some advantage to having the sky that we've got right now because we're not able to leave the cities, go out to the countryside if we live in cities. If you're lucky enough to live somewhere dark, obviously, it's a different situation. But at this time of year, the the skies dominated by the constellation of orion and the stars of orion are part of a group called the winter circle which is a ring of first magnitude the brightest stars in the sky around orion and for us in the northern hemisphere it's pretty much the brightest sky that we see so go out and look at that and enjoy it because even in the inner city it's pretty obvious you can see Sirius the brightest star in the whole sky if you go down from Orion's belt down to the left and Betelgeuse which was speculated

last year it was about to go supernova which was nobody really quite believed I think but it was fading right down it's back so top left of Orion this bright red star is back there again but if you've got a pair of binoculars i would recommend again given the constraints of going anywhere have a look at things basically like the moon as well because it's really high at the moment it's uh very dramatic when it's full in january it's called the wolf moon and it's pretty much as high as it gets in the sky or it's when it's at a different phase you can look for craters in the usual way and when it's not around when you've got a slightly darker sky even in the inner city you can look for things like star clusters if you get a star map and you look for Messier's 35 36 37 and 38 which are respectively in the constellations of Gemini and Auriga you pick those out with your binoculars you'll see at

least smudges and if you've got a small telescope you'll see they resolve into beautiful clusters of stars so even in the inner city that's something that you can pick out and as ever we'd love to see your photos of those brilliant i got some new binoculars for christmas and a tripod mount as well because you know what those things are heavy and my arms started shaking i'm like i'm so weak i'm so glad i got a tripod mount but i'm definitely going to use those to look at the things that you just suggested robert definitely for those tips and also taylor pomfret on twitter asks what are some of the top astronomical events that we should look out for in 2021 you know for those of us who got new toys for Christmas? Well there's a few things coming up actually a few months away that really caught my eye there's a partial solar eclipse or visible as a partial solar eclipse in the UK on

the 10th of June it's actually really well timed it peaks at 11 30 in the morning so if we've got good weather and the 10th of June and the usual caveats that we'll explain nearer the time about protecting your eyes and looking at it safely and so on, about a fifth of the sun will be covered in London and two fifths up in Shetland. So it's not too bad at all. Now, if we're allowed to travel and you're quite rich, you can go to Northern Greenland and see what's called an annular eclipse there where the sun isn't completely covered, but there's a ring of sunlight around it and if you've got even more in the way of resources you can go and see a total eclipse in the Antarctic in December but that's probably probably rather more ambitious as well as that great view for the penguins yeah exactly

no I mean it'd be a fantastic opportunity and believe me I'm more than happy to offer my services as a guide if any travel company is up and running. There's also a good meteor shower in August. The Perseids are well placed. That's an annual favourite, but the moon isn't in the sky this year, so that'll be nice in the middle of August. And potentially the most exciting thing is that there might be another brightish comet towards the end of the year, the comet Leonard.

Leonard, oh, that's so cute. Hiya, Leonard. It connects very nicely with the Big Bang Theory if if if the weather's clear it might be visible to the naked eye and certainly good in binoculars now the only caveat i would add to that is that because you've got to have a lot of caveats in astronomy is that last year i talked about two comets that both broke up before we then had the wonderful NEOWISE. NEOWISE is brilliant, but we promoted two comets before that and they broke up. So we never quite know what comets are going to do.

It's the whole thing about they're like cats. They've got tails and they do exactly what they do. Can I ask why Leonard? Why is it called Comet Leonard? It's named Comet Leonard because it was discovered by an astrophysicist called Greg Leonard. And if you're lucky enough to find a comet, then you get to name it after yourself. It's one of the few examples, things like stars, planets and so on. There's a more complicated

process, but comets, you get to name them. So Comet Leonard, but Greg to his friends. And also, can I just come into this safe space just to say what went on with the weather for the great conjunction I know I had my checklist of what I was going to take with me and then on the Sunday I was like oh actually it's just a really clear sky I'll nip out and have a nice look and manage that but didn't give it it's it's full time if I'm going to be honest and then come monday clouds everywhere yeah i checked the forecast so done the exact same thing and and saw it on sunday knowing it was probably the only chance i was gonna get but i did the thing where i knew i needed to be really high to be able to see it because i wouldn't because it was quite close to the horizon so my garden is too many

trees so i was in the spare bedroom and i was like i'm gonna be able to see it from that window it's fine but of course it was so far round that i was i opened the window it's actually hanging out my partner was holding on to me and then i was like you can just about see it now hi neighbors you know we got lucky but did exactly the same thing as you're describing you know to doing it the night before and showing my daughter and i did get a photo i was quite pleased with that because my astrophotos are never amazing. But I did, seeing the two planets together was great. I think, honestly, you're right, though, that the weather, it's the UK. And sometimes you just have to say, well, they're only a little bit further apart the day before and the day after.

So just take it as it comes. Yeah, but actually, you know, for those who missed that, though, there is actually another conjunction coming up in February, isn't there, ofus and jupiter now we won't be able to see it from the uk because it'll be too low on the horizon but for those of you you know a bit further south perhaps near the equator or even further south than that shock horror um you probably have a great view of the conjunction of venus and jupiter right before sunrise is it february 11th february the 11th yeah yeah february the 11th. Yeah, and look out, February 10th, there'll be Jupiter, Venus and Saturn all in a row as well,

which I really wanted to see, but we can't see it from the UK. Very, very, very low for us, I think. Yeah, it's just that there's the advantage of being in the Southern Hemisphere sometimes, isn't there? Damn those Southern Hemisphere people with their good views. Goddammit. We do have a few listeners, I think, don't we? Yeah, but if they are down in Australia...

Well, Jacinda Ardern, of course. Well, that's it for this month. We'll be back next time with a look at the first stars. And we're going to be bringing back the Space Book Club. So send in your favourite science book recommendations. Yeah, all the ones you got for Christmas and you've been reading in January to keep you entertained during lockdown.

We want to hear all about them. And also send us your questions. It's at Royal Astrosoc on Twitter or email podcast at ras.ac.uk and we'll try and cover them in a future episode until then happy stargazing